Digital Economy USRG

Creative Digifest #SXSC2 Speaker Profiles: Alan Patrick

Avatar photoOctober 1, 2012
by Lisa Harris

This is the latest in ourseries of posts profiling the speakers and panelists at the Creative Digifest.

Alan Patrick is the co-founder of Broadsight, which focuses on market intelligence, strategy and systems development across the multi-media ecosystem. Broadsight has consulted to many of the major digital-media players in Europe and has helped start or turn around a number of startups. They have also developed innovative technology for a number of clients. Alan also writes the well regarded Broadstuff blog on technology development. He has also developed the ‘Broadstuff Bubble-o-Meter’ tracking the current Social Media bubble’s evolution, which has been picked up by other technology blogs and the Guardian.

Alan Patrick with Student Digital Champion Ivan Melendez at the first SXSC Digifest

How are digital technologies transforming our lives?

1982 – Just seen the new IBM PC with a 10Mb Hard Disk!! Am 2 years away from starting to write MSc thesis on interconnecting these new fangled Microcomputers on even newer fangled idea of local and wide area “integrated networks”. Thesis will be mainly typed on a typewriter, with lots of photocopying, cutting, and pasting.

1992 – whinging on new fangled in-company email system, on my luggable PC, about sitting by the fax machine late on a Friday night trying to send a large report to a client. Later that year got my first modem and Demon internet connection. Became au fait with Archie, Veronica, Gopher et al. Report was written on a Word Processor, but has to be printed out, graphics added via a DTP standalone system, then faxed to client.

2002 – Setting up my first new fangled 0.5Mb broadband connection from my new Home Office, writing major report on my laptop and cutting and pasting data from the Web, shortly to email it via my Broadband (so no anxious waiting over the dialup modem). My report is typed on a word processor, and I cut and paste it digitally via an integrated DTP software suite. I am on Skype for a conference call with colleagues as I write, co-ordinating our views. After that is done, I am considering whether Google is finally better at search than Yahoo and whether to buy a book I want via eBay or Amazon. Am very proud of my new mobile, which (in theory) has internet access,  though it is a pain to use. Still, I can download my emails on it. Hooray!!!

2012 – Writing this while cursing that my 8Mb broadband connection in my home office is running at 1/4 speed, and the kids are sucking up all the bandwidth that it is a pain to synch my iPad, IPhone, laptop and home desktop email quickly. I have run a small company from my Home Office for 5 years now. I will shortly be going into London for a meeting, so I load the address into my iPhone and it gives me a map and directions. As I walk to the station I send a Twitter message to the people I hope to see there, telling everyone I am on my way.

2022 – My iPhone is a tieclip (ties are back in), running on bandwidth of several 100 Mb, and I wear my piezoelectric charging charging laptop on my head and plug it into my cortex. My UI is thought powered, and direct-to-brain display. My car is electric, as are my friends, because geeks still don’t get laid despite the plethora of Big Datamining online dating agencies…..

What can the latest technologies do for you?

  • save time and cost all the way across my workflow
  • replace physical commute and location limitations with online comms
  • rapid access to the relevant information
  • visibility of others’ activities
  • integrate disparate systems

If you’re not online, are you out of the game?

No, but you may not see all the plays, or see them as quickly as others do.

Categories: Blog, Creative DigiFest 2, and SxSC2 Bio. Tags: SXSC2.